The related "Conductive Film Magnetic Components" patent application discloses magnetic components having windings comprised of a continuous flat conductive film which has a serpentine configuration when disposed in a plane and which is folded upon itself to form a plurality of layers providing a current path which encircles a magnetic pole of the structure. Also disclosed therein are secondary windings interleaved with the layers of the continuous film winding to provide a transformer. The conductive film secondary windings may comprise a plurality of separate conductive films connected in parallel to provide a low resistance, high current capacity secondary winding. Such structures are particularly useful for step down transformers because they provide primary and secondary windings having substantially equal power handling capacities at high frequencies.
The related "High Frequency Transformer" patent application discloses a flat conductive film transformer in which the primary and secondary windings are disposed on a common dielectric membrane.
A recognized alternative winding configuration for flat conductor windings for use in high frequency transformers is the barrel-wound transformer winding in which flat conductors are wound around a mandrel and then placed over a central post in a cylindrical ferrite cup core. As discussed at pages 625 and 626 of an article entitled "The Relationship Between Size and Power Dissipation in a 1-10 MHz Transformer" by A. F. Goldberg et al. which appeared in the proceedings of the 1989 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference at pages 625-634, barrel-wound transformers present size and power density complications and/or winding connection complications because of the manner of winding the windings to form a cylinder for insertion in the ferrite cup core.
One of the problems with barrel-wound transformers is interconnecting different turns of a multi-turn, multi-layer winding. For economy and speed of assembly, it is desirable to use commercially available cup cores for these transformers. Such cup cores have diametrically opposed slots in their sidewalls for passage of the primary and secondary winding external terminal portions. A problem with existing barrel-would transformers is that the primary and secondary winding external terminal portions are frequently offset from diametrically opposed positions following winding of those conductors on a mandrel during the fabrication of the transformer.
The above-identified related patent applications present solutions to the problems of efficiently connecting different layers of planar transformer windings. There is a need for a corresponding improvement in the interconnection of windings in a barrel-wound flat conductor transformer.